feminine inconsistency,
a decided return to the world of fashion and conventionality apparently
just as she was effectually excluded from it. She had not only discarded
her white dress as a concession to the practical evidence of the
surrounding winter, but she had also brought out a feather hat and sable
muff which had once graced a fashionable suburb of Boston. Even Falkner
had exchanged his slouch hat and picturesque serape for a beaver
overcoat and fur cap of Hale's which had been pressed upon him by Kate,
under the excuse of the exigencies of the season. Within a stone's throw
of the thicket, turbulent with the savage forces of nature, they walked
with the abstraction of people hearing only their own voices; in the
face of the solemn peaks clothed with white austerity they talked
gravely of dress.

"I don't mean to say," said Kate demurely, "that you're to give up the
serape entirely; you can wear it on rainy nights and when you ride over
here from your friend's house to spend the evening--for the sake of old
times," she added, with an unconscious air of referring to an already
antiquated friendship; "but you must admit it's a little too gorgeous
and theatrical for the sunlight of day and the public highway."

"But why should that make it wrong, if the experience of a people has
shown it to be a garment best fitted for their wants and requirements?"
said Falkner argumentatively.

"But you are not one of those people," said Kate, "and that makes all
the difference. You look differently and act differently, so that there
is something irreconcilable between your clothes and you that makes you
look odd."

"And to look odd, according to your civilized prejudices, is to be
wrong," said Falkner bitterly.

"It is to seem different from what one really is--which IS wrong. Now,
you are a mining superintendent, you tell me. Then you don't want to
look like a Spanish brigand, as you do in that serape. I am sure if you
had ridden up to a stage-coach while I was in it, I'd have handed you my
watch and purse without a word. There! you are not offended?" she added,
with a laugh, which did not, however, conceal a certain earnestness.
"I suppose I ought to have said I would have given it gladly to such
a romantic figure, and perhaps have got out and danced a saraband or
bolero with you--if that is the thing to do nowadays. Well!" she said,
after a dangerous pause, "consider that I've said it."

He had been walking a little b